Consumers are increasingly using kiosks to conduct business with enterprises. The kiosks come in a variety of sizes and are used for a variety of purposes. Some kiosks are drive through, such as fast food establishments, pharmacies, banks, and the like. Other kiosks are stationary located in gas stations, airlines, grocery stores, department stores, and the like.
One type of kiosk, an Automated Teller Machine (ATM) has not evolved very much since it was first introduced many decades ago. An ATM still largely functions in the manner it did when it was first introduced: a customer swipes or inserts a bank card, the customer then enters a Personal Identification Number (PIN), the customer selects a transaction, and the transaction completes.
ATMs are located in a variety of locations for the convenience of consumers: some are drive thru, some in stores, some at sporting or entertainment locations, and the like. ATMs require security and include architectures similar to traditional computers; however, ATMs also require a variety of peripheral devices that often require maintenance, such as displays, keypads, card readers, and the like. Thus, ATMs are expensive to maintain and operate.
In addition, in recent years some banks have been updating display monitors and processing capabilities of their ATMs to provide a greater variety of transactions available to their customers. For example, providing access to an interactive teller remotely via a video feed to the ATM is a feature that is becoming very popular.
The problem is that these newer kiosks are only sparsely available and are usually tied to the bank locations. Moreover, some ATMs are now available are headless meaning that the completely lack a display monitor, which is a less expensive approach for a bank and provides better security for the customers. So, installing monitors on headless ATMs to provide an interactive teller feature would defeat the very purpose of a headless ATM.